The dominant French subway consortium Interinfra has won the contract to extend Cairo's Number 2 line, worth 261 million Egyptian pounds ($65.2 million), the company told AFP Sunday, August 5.

Interinfra, which built almost all the city's Number 1 and 2 subway lines starting in the early 1980s, will extend the line by three kilometers (1.8 miles) including two new stations. One of them will be at Munib, the new bridge, which crosses the Nile in the southern suburbs, near the Giza pyramids.

Interinfra groups Vinci, Bouygues, Spie Public Works, Spie Enertrans, Alsthom transports, Alcatel Italia, and public Egyptian firm Arab Contractors. It is aiming to participate in the coming years in the project to build the third line, which would link the large western Imbala quarter with the northwest Cairo airport along 33 kilometers (20 miles) of track.

Cairo's subway is equipped with cars built by Alsthom and Japan's Mitsubishi. ― (AFP, Cairo)